Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said that the US government has “backup plans” for funding itself if Congress doesn’t raise the debt limit before lawmakers leave for their August recess as hoped. When the US Treasury used accounting methods to bridge shortfalls ahead of the increase of the 2015 debt ceiling, US front-end rates fell to zero, but this happened within an environment of increasing global deflation concerns and China facing risks of substantial outflows threatening financial stability. Nowadays, global growth conditions are supportive as 2015 global economic headwinds have turned into powerful tailwinds for the US. The Treasury using accounting flexibility suggests it will issue less, which may ease US financial conditions further. There is no need for the Fed to reconsider the pace of its anticipated tightening path, it seems.

Ahead of Wednesday’s FOMC meeting, US financial conditions continue to improve, supported by the US House Republicans passing the vote to revamp the Dodd-Frank Act and repeal the Volcker Rule which restricted banks from making speculative investments with their own capital. This suggests freer investment in riskier assets as well as lower US funding costs. Hence, we pay little attention to the 1.8% decline of the NASDAQ on Friday, considering the resilience of the broader S&P 500 and limited spillover into Asian equity markets. A 25bp Fed Funds rate hike is 95% priced in, suggesting that all eyes will be on the statement in respect of the Fed’s judgement of the future economic outlook, and on the FOMC providing updates on their Policy Normalization Principles and Plans, including a set of gradually increasing caps, or limits, on the dollar amounts of Treasury and agency securities that would be allowed to run off each month, and only the amounts of securities repayments that exceeded the caps would be reinvested each month.